


Counting Bodies Like Sheep to the Rhythm of the War Drums

by forestjotnar



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2016-07-26
Packaged: 2018-07-26 20:32:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7589032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forestjotnar/pseuds/forestjotnar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not every man was a good father, but sometimes vengeance is more important than love.<br/>Friends and lovers aren't always the answer, and sometimes pain can only accept blood as the balm for healing. </p>
<p>Speed freak, blood and bullet junkie, synth liberation or destruction, whoever gives the best toys and has access to the best candy is to be followed, fuck the overlords of any cause. That's what Solomon lives by, a blood loving half-raider before the bombs even fell across the world. His knuckles had split in a thousand bare knuckle brawls after his military discharge, and hundreds of bottles of alcohol had littered behind him as he struggled to pretend with a family he never wanted. Born in the wrong era, he finds his truth in a ravaged Commonwealth, where blades and bullets can lead the negotiations, and the brutality that marked his soft life is accepted, even celebrated by some. None of that matters, because he knows what he wants. The Commonwealth has a throne, even if the citizens don't want to admit that. And Solomon doesn't want the throne for himself. But he sure as hell wants to tear it down and make sure no one else can sit there and rule over people who deserve their freedom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Counting Bodies Like Sheep to the Rhythm of the War Drums

**Author's Note:**

> There is some rather gory descriptions in this first chapter, and a mention of a slaver who does not discriminate who he takes, and includes young children in his product catalog. Alludes to abuse of a minor.

"Give me your fucking arm." 

The words were said with no inflection, monotone and all the more frightening for it. Cait was used to words being said in anger, screamed with rage or drug fueled speed, words clipped as they were bit through teeth that could tear through steel. He didn't have any of that in his tone, the man she had chosen to follow after Tommy sold her contract told the slaver to give up the arm the same way a Mr. Handy would say that something wasn't in it's programming. Cold. Robotic. Not for the first time she wondered if Sol was a synth, a courser in disguise. She had seen him bleed, seen him piss, seen him disappear off into the rooms with Magnolia, far as she knew, that wasn't Synth activities. But you never knew with the Commonwealth, and she would never know with Sol. 

Curie, Preston, and Piper, all watching with looks of disgust on their faces, as Sol pulled the slaver from what he referred to as the Sanctuary jail. It was remarkably well made, clean, rarely had anyone in it. You had to be special for Sol to bring you back here, to not die in whatever skirmish you found yourself facing him in on the roads or shanty towns of the Commonwealth. The man in question, the one kicking and screaming when he had been drug from his cell by the super mutant Strong, he had been special. A slaver, which some people though weren't so bad. Sol wouldn't usually touch one if they didn't have any product with them, from what they had all seen. But this one had had his products with him, on display almost. They had all heard about what had happened from Deacon, who had been with Sol that day. As much as some of those that called themselves Sol's friends hated death, or corporal punishment, or any of that 'down and dirty bloody shit' as Sol called it, they couldn't fault him for the punishment he wanted to give out. The Commonwealth was a harsh place, and sometimes it caught up with you. 

Sol looked out over those that had gathered for the punishment of the captured slaver. He had drug the man, half dead and bleeding, into Sanctuary while it piss poured rain down on all of them. He had stimpacked the scum, just to make sure he would survive until it was time for him to face justice. And he had promised, loudly and emphatically, that the slaver would face that justice as soon as the rain stopped. 

And now it had finally stopped. 

So Sol stood in front of his companions, advisers, some time lovers, and the people that had came to his pre-War town to find peace and safety. And he provided that. He had built them homes, houses that rose above the ground and were almost skyscrapers of wood and steel. Walls and turrets encircled them, keeping the evils of the new Wasteland at bay. Guards held checkpoints, traders came through the town and traded supplies, making cap over fist because they knew they wouldn't get screwed here, that the unofficial Mayor would make sure everything was right if there was an attempt at cheating anyone. Clinics, a bar, and inn. He had helped build every bit of it, hammering in just as many nails as any man or woman here. He smirked as he spotted Strong holding the man to be punished off to the side. Even Strong had become accepted, though barely. He worked with the local butcher, with the explicit deal that no human meat was to cross that counter or slide under that knife. And everyone, for the most part, was happy. 

Though it pissed people off when he did this. Especially those that thought the Commonwealth could be won over with love, light, and truth. But he didn't look Curie in the eyes as he picked up his axe, knowing there was still pain there for far more than what he was about to do. 

He looked at the slaver again. The mans name was Norman. What a silly fucking name for a grown man to have, especially in a business like enslaving the tough nuts of the Wasteland. He was little, scrawny, and stunk of piss and shit. Sol didn't really want to touch his arm, but he didn't have a choice. The man wouldn't give up his arm willingly. So Sol grabbed it and slammed it down, the block in front of him made of wide and thick wood so that the arm didn't overpower it. With a grunt, Sol grabbed the hand of the man, pushing it down on a spike at the end of the block. He didn't want him to move it, he wanted him to feel pain. He looked the slaver in the eyes the entire time he pressed the metal through the flesh, taking a small pleasure as the man gasped like a fish, turning white with pain. 

Sol looked up, ignoring the looks of horror and disgust. It was nothing personal. He ignored the looks of satisfaction and pleasure in equal measure. But now he had to speak, and he wanted to get that over with as quickly as possible. He hated to speak to crowds, but his duty demanded it. The fact that he had to allow them to know the crimes of the punished, that demanded it. So he spoke, his voice raspy as he tried to make it loud for all those that had gathered. 

"Today is a day for punishment, for sins most grevious against fellow man." He said, grabbing Norman's long hair and making him show his face to the crowd, the man wide eyed and sweating as he squirmed in pain. Sol hissed, butting his head against the other mans and telling him not to fucking move, the words hissed out between clenched teeth before he faced the crowd again. 

"This is Norman. Norman is a slaver by trade. Norman here," and the man tried to pull away, earning a kick from Sol's armoured boot to his liver, "Was within two miles of Sanctuary when he was found. Tell the crowd what you tried to sell me and my companion, Norman. Tell them." The slaver refused to speak, sullenly glaring at Sol as he tried to control his breathing. He tried to gather himself, a thin line of spittle shooting between his lips as he spat at the man who had captured him, taking away all of his selling stock. Sol laughed, wiping his face clean. Then he brought his plated glove around, crashing it into the side of Norman's face, listening to the man cry out in pain as the blow jerked his body, pulling on the hand that was spiked to the block. Sol grinned feral like an animal, and then addressed the crowd again. 

"Our prisoner pleads the fifth," He said loudly, ignoring the looks of confusion. He had tried to introduce a bill of rights, a constitution and all the amendments to it like his America had had, but hardly anyone paid any attention to it so he had forgotten the effort. "Norman here, who decided he didn't want to answer, tried to sell my Companion and I a few slaves." His face darkened as he glared at Norman, fingers gripping tightly to the axe in his hand, "The oldest of which was twelve. Norman here assured us that all of his slaves were 'broken in'," And here the disgust was evident in face and tone, the first time any inflection had coloured his voice, "And would make as good a bed warmer as they would a home cleaner." 

He looked out over them, and his people shuffled on their feet, and they would have sworn that he was looking into whatever counted for their souls at that time, "So I know. I have no right to punish those that don't try and operate in Sanctuary. But this kind of shit will not be allowed in a Commonwealth I have fought and killed for. That I have watched friends die for. And if I have to bring every single one of these fuckers I find out there back here to face punishment, I will. Until they're fucking smart enough to make sure they don't do it anymore, until these fucking scum!" He roared the last word, fire and passion, a fine orator. He continued the next words low, so that the people leaned and shuffled forward to hear him, hanging on those words, "Until these fucking scum scurry back into the dark, and under the houses and homes of ill repute, and know not to darken the road during the day, secure and safe in what they think is acceptance of what they do." 

He drew the axe up, over his shoulder, and the blade glinted in the sunlight of the Commonwealth before it was just a flash of metal, the arc it carved ended suddenly with a loud thunk, and a hairsbreadth of a second later, the first scream was heard. Norman the Slaver screamed at the stump that existed where his arm once had, and Strong released him as he took the other arm and dug it into wounded and bleeding flesh to try and stop the bleeding, to try and make himself feel and arm and believe he had been tricked. 

But it was no joke, no cruel illusion. Grunting, Sol leaned down, stimming the man in the neck. It wouldn't grow anything back, but sure enough the wound started to scab. Sol stood again, motioning to Strong and Danse. 

"Get him bandaged at the clinic, then escort him to the gates. Same thing we give everyone, two day pack. Make sure he understands the penalty for returning here, but do not kill him before you give him the chance to leave. He may be useful yet, for if he lives, he will surely warn other raiders and slavers of what awaits them in this corner of the Commonwealth." 

But what most raiders and slavers didn't know, was while they could not operate with impunity around Sanctuary, the real boundaries were far wider than that. Any town that pledged allegiance to the Minutemen would capture the worst of the worst, and they would travel the long way to the walled town that held the General. And there they would be punished, just like Norman the Slaver had been punished. Sol looked toward the main gate, and the banner poles that flew there. At the tops of a few rested the stripped skulls of some of those who had decided an arm wasn't enough of a deterrent for their actions, those that had returned to Sanctuary, either as a prisoner or at the head of a raider band intent on tearing down the walls. 

None had succeeded. Every being that lived in Sanctuary knew how to use a firearm. They knew that when the bells and alarms rang, they would grab their firearm and fight. Or they would no longer live in Sanctuary, simple as that. There were few exceptions, of course. As he put away his axe and stripped off the gloves that he wore, Sol smiled at once such exception. 

Annabella had been described as one of the absolute best students Mister Zwicky had ever taught. Sol thought himself lucky to have convinced her, with no shortage of help from Piper and Preston, to come to Sanctuary to help teach the children that would and had invariably started to fill up the town. And as he had just dumped another six students on her to watch and look over, he hoped she was handling the workload well. 

"Miss Anna, how are the new students fitting in?" 

She gave him a hard look, displeasure about how he had handled the slaver evident on her face. "They are fitting in as well as they can. Several of them have mental scars, are malnourished, have lice, have other parasites, what name you. They can't learn with the other children yet, but as soon as we clear them medically, they will." 

Sol nodded, then spoke. "Speak to Curie. Medically, she'll do her absolute best to get them up to speed and healed up. She likes kids." 

"Or you can talk to her yourself," Annabella snapped, turning and walking away, her voice still carrying to his ears, "We're tired of running errands between you two because you don't want to face her." 

Sol knew that he needed to face her, but after what had just taken place, he didn't want to. So instead, he talked to the few that had lingered to speak with him, families wanting to know how long it would be before the new children would be able to be petitioned for their adoption. Sol made no promises, knowing that these children would be different than any of their regular orphan types. The orphanage of Sanctuary would house them if needed, of course, but rarely did any child stay there long before they were picked up by a family that wanted their own little one. MacCready was the director of the orphanage, and still managed to be bored. But maybe with this new batch, he would actually have some work to do for once, instead of following around Piper like a lost puppy that needed a new master while he waited for the caravans to bring Duncan here to him. 

Sol bumped open his door with his hip, the fresh home a much better option than the one he and Nora had shared so briefly before the bombs fell. 

That old home held nothing but anger and bad memories, nights spent fighting, sleeping on the couch, knocking over a small mountain of beer bottles when he had needed to take a piss or throw up from the amount he drank. Coming home bloody and covered in alley dirt, just to have an argument with a wife that was holding a screaming baby. No, that house wouldn't do for him, not anymore. The wood and steel he had crafted this new one out of, he liked that look. That rough and tumble look, like the house said 'the man who lives here is dangerous, so if you open this door be ready for a fight'. That was what he wanted people to think of his private home. There was an office for the official Mayor that was warm and homey, but since he wasn't official, he didn't use it. People just waited to talk to him while he was out in the streets. And since he was almost always on the streets... they talked to him a lot. 

With a sigh, he sat down on his couch, closing his eyes and tilting back his head. He felt Dogmeat climb on there with him, laying his head on his friends lap. Sol gently scratched between the dogs ears, smiling softly as he felt the dog vibrate with happiness. Sol just wanted a moment, a simple moment of peace. The radio he had forgotten to turn off was playing softly in the background, the smooth sounds of jazz from Goodneighbor lulling him into a drowsy feeling of quiet.

"I have never understood how you could look so peaceful, when you are capable of such horrible acts of violence." A soft voice murmured, the accent unmistakable. 

Sol suddenly felt a hundred years older, but he tried to raise his head without showing it too much. And there she was, standing by the back hallway, arms crossed as she looked at him. Unlike a lot of the homes of Sanctuary, Sol had chosen not to use the harsh electric lights that he had hated before he was frozen, and instead opted for more windows and the use of candles at night. In the soft glow of the deepening twilight, Curie was an angel. She had always been an angel, but still. No real angel would have that look of contempt and hurt on their face when they looked at him. No, she was a devil, sent to torture him for being the way that he was. The way that a world had made him far before he had ever climbed into the cryogenic chamber in the Vault over the hill. Sol decided to face his demon, and rubbing his face he sat up all the way and looked at her. 

Dogmeat, the little traitor, hopped off the couch and tried to climb up Curie, wanting to lick her face and love on her. The dog probably didn't understand why the woman who had came around and then been here every day, every morning that Sol was home, every night when he went to bed, had suddenly stopped being there, even though she was still in town. So Sol softened to his dog, reducing him to flipflopper versus traitor. With another sigh, he reached forward to under his coffee table, removing one of his few vices from the medical cooler that was stored there. 

As he opened the pre-War pack of cigarettes, he tried to ignore the look of anger on Curie's face. She hated when he smoked, hated when he drank. It's why he had briefly considered hooking up with Cait. She liked the violence, she liked the drinking, she liked the wild and lusty fucking in the back alley type shit. But what she didn't like was a man that acted like he didn't have any emotions, and that's what he was to her most of the time. So it had never happened but one time, when they were both too fucked up and hammered to remember it well. No one else knew about that little romp except for Curie. He had disclosed it to her when they had solidified their relationship, though now he felt like it was stupid to have done so, since they were all but no longer speaking. But she knew far worse secrets than that, and if there was anyone that he didn't regret telling them to, it was Curie. She knew things he hadn't even told Nora, back when he had been a man who had felt like he was in the wrong time, adrift after his discharge and unable to get back to the fighting. 

But finally, he answered his Curie. Formerly his Curie. 

"What would you have had me do, Curie? Hmm? Just take the children he was destroying, and let him wander the Wasteland like nothing had happened?" He stood, eyes blazing. He was a small man really, barely breaking five foot eight inches, and topping the scales at one hundred and fifty pounds on a good day. But he looked so much bigger when he had that fire in his eyes. "So that he could enslave more, capture more, and then hope I found him in time, hope that I saved whoever he had caught before he broke them in as bed warmers or sold them to some cannibal rapist out there? To hell with that," He spat, shaking his head, "If he dies, he'll never slave again. And one armed, I doubt he'll fight or kill anyone to take their young ones away from them. He will never destroy another family again, and I didn't take his life." 

"I would have preferred you took his life when you found him!" Curie responded, her own voice rising in anger. Dogmeat whined, then padded off towards the small alcove under the stairs that held his bed. "It is the exhibition that you seem so happy to provide! The blood sports you so willingly engage in, that you chopped a mans arm off in front of people so that they would see, when it could have as easily been done out there, out in the Wasteland you seem so convinced is nothing but blood and destruction and hatred!" 

She was crying. Sol had never cared if Nora cried. She was his wife because she had became pregnant with his son, no reason more. They had been Catholic, when such a thing existed, and it had seemed the right thing to do when they had paid their price for sinning and having sex without marrying. Now God didn't exist anymore, even if Sol still had a rosary tucked under his shirt, still said his prayers every night. 

But Curie was crying, and those tears hurt him, no matter how much he didn't want to admit it to anyone. He didn't like her crying for anything, and he felt the guilt sink into his gut because he knew she was crying over him. When she had moved out, she had told him she still loved him, would always love him. But she didn't know if love was enough. Sometimes he didn't know either. Sol stepped forward, hands gently resting on the curve of her shoulders as she tried to offer her some sort of solace as she cried. 

"Curie..." He whispered, taking a breath, "I don't hurt people because I love it. Yes, I box with men who get into the ring with me, who do it of their own free will, with rules and regulations. It's not like the place we found Cait. It's violence, but it's regulated violence. Boxing was popular even before the bombs fell." He closed his eyes, resting his forehead against hers, "How do you suggest that I make people understand that these horrible crimes will be met with swift and terrible justice without doing it how I do it? Please, if you have a suggestion that makes sense, I'm all ears, let me know what you know. Otherwise," He opened his eyes, stepping away from her, "I will do it the way that I know how, to make this place start to learn about law and order and what is unacceptable and what is not. And if I have to do that on a pile of bodies, standing in a lake of blood, while the savages and the warriors pound war drums and come for me, then that is what I will do." 

Curie leaned against the wall, and she looked very small and very alone. And he knew that he had caused that, but he tried to steel his heart against it and hold himself to the standard. If he had to be alone to complete this vision, then that was what he would be. Alone. 

"I cannot think of a way." Curie looked up at him, eyes flashing, "But that does not mean there is a way. And I will find one, and you will have to listen to reason for once, Solomon Rune." 

With that, Curie was gone, back out of the door that she had came in through. Sol followed after a moment, shutting the door and locking it. Not that it mattered. She had a key, and he wouldn't ask for it back from her, not unless she offered to give it. He started to climb his stairs, finding their bed as unmade as it had been since the day she walked out. Solomon shrugged out of his shirt, knees making noise as he knelt by the bedside, clasping his rosary as he said his nightly prayers. Finally, he climbed into the bed, looking at the skylight and the stars that he loved so dearly above him. 

"If there is a way, someone show me," He whispered to the sky, to the stars, to a God he was sure was dead. "Because if not, then I'm going to continue the way I am. I'll carve out civilization with my fists, my blades. I'll set law and order with rifle and pistol. So either give me a sign, or make sure you stay out of my way."


End file.
